A COVID-19-related rental assistance program helping Santa Barbara County residents has paid out more than $14 million so far, and received more applications than current funding can support, organizers say.
The United Way of Santa Barbara County, in partnership with the county, has distributed emergency rental assistance to eligible residents who cannot pay rent because of pandemic-related financial losses.
More than 4,300 grants have been made for COVID-19 individual assistance, rental assistance and utilities totaling about $14.4 million, according to communications and grant coordinator Katie Higgins.
Nearly 14,200 households have submitted applications requesting financial support, Higgins said.
The organization is not currently accepting new applications, since it already has received more applications than funding can support, she said.
“Although we have closed the portal, we are still processing hundreds of applications and will continue to do so for a few months,” said Steve Ortiz, president/CEO of United Way of Santa Barbara County. “We simply have received more applications than we can fund at this time.”
Funds have been provided by government contracts — including from federal COVID-19 relief bills — as well as donations from individuals, corporations and family foundations, according to Higgins.
In less than three months, California’s tenants may no longer have protections under the eviction moratorium triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The federal eviction moratorium, which prevents the eviction of tenants who are unable to make rental payments, is scheduled to expire July 31, but the state moratorium was extended through Sept. 30.
State Assembly Bill 832 also allocated more funding to help tenants and landlords who were affected by the pandemic, said Rob Fredericks, executive director/CEO of the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara.
The state has additional emergency rental assistance funding available for people experiencing a COVID-19 financial impact or unemployment.
Tenant households have to be low-income — meaning below 80% of the area median income for 2020 or 2021 — to apply, and they must show evidence of income being reduced because of impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the program.
Either the landlord or tenant may apply directly through the state’s Housing Is Key website, housing.ca.gov/covid_rr/index.html.
Provisions include increasing the reimbursement for past due rent to 100% and for 100% for overdue utilities, Fredericks said.
“The state site is pretty easy to navigate to apply for assistance,” Fredericks said.
According to a bill analysis of AB 832, the legislation will extend the state’s COVID-19 eviction protections through Sept. 30 “to allow additional time for rental assistance funds to be distributed. It also increases payments from the state’s rental assistance program to fully cover 100% of a tenant’s missed rent by eliminating the current requirement for landlords to forgive 20% in order receive payment for the remaining 80%.
“Finally, following the expiration of eviction protection on Sept. 30, the bill provides six additional months of procedural safeguards to pause evictions in cases where tenants need additional time to access rental assistance funds.”
Another aspect of the bill is, “after current eviction protections end on Oct. 1, tenants cannot be evicted during the next six months so long as they complete an application for government rental assistance.”
Aside from providing security for residents to remain in their homes, the moratorium extension offers the ability to get the funds out directly to tenants or landlords, so that they can be made whole and to protect their housing in the long term, according to Fredericks.
“A concern I have is, despite news and marketing of the extension and the funds available, many tenants and landlords are not aware of the help that is available — so, when the moratorium ends, I believe we may see evictions occur where they could have been avoided,” Fredericks said.
Some jurisdictions, including Santa Barbara County, run separate rental assistance programs from the state, said Arwen Chenery, chief of staff for Assemblyman Steve Bennett, D-Ventura. However, if renters and landlords visit the state’s rent relief website, they’ll be directed to the correct program, Chenery said.
When state eviction protections are lifted on Oct. 1, renters who qualify for renter assistance can still apply to get their payments covered as long as they meet the eligibility criteria, Chenery told Noozhawk via email.
Additionally, between Oct. 1 and March 31, there will be added protections to eviction processes for tenants who began their tenancy before Oct. 1.
“Those protections include pausing the eviction process to allow renters to apply for and receive rental assistance payments,” she said. “Landlords are also required to apply to rental assistance on behalf of their tenant in order to file an eviction complaint with the court.”
As part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $100 billion California Comeback Plan, the renter assistance package would help qualified low-income residents “pay back 100% of their back rent and rent for several months into the future and give billions to Californians to pay their overdue utility bills.”
The governor presented his plan in May, and it is proposed to provide more than $5 billion to help low-income tenants pay 100% of back rent, according to the state.
Locally, unemployment spiked at 13% in March 2020 and then fell as stay-at-home orders ended and more industries added back jobs, according to the UCSB Economic Forecast Project.
At the height of the pandemic, the county lost about 22,000 jobs. Workers with low-wage positions (which average $25,000 to $30,000 annually) had the most significant job losses, accounting for 77% of the 22,000 local jobs lost between February and April 2020. The leisure and hospitality industries were hit the hardest, as well as food services and dining industries.
A recent report from the City of Santa Barbara shows the rental burden for housing in the area, and it considers spending 30% of income on rent to be “affordable.”
For the South Coast region, the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment increased from $2,000 in 2012 to $2,800 in 2021, while a one-bedroom apartment increased from $1,470 in 2012 to $2,000 in 2021, according to annual rental housing listing data.
The study, called the City of Santa Barbara 2021 Rent Survey for the South Coast, notes that a two-person household with each person earning minimum wage would total $54,080 for the year, or about $4,506 per month. The minimum wage in the city is $13 per hour.
The median one-bedroom apartment in the city in 2021 cost $2,000 per month. The median two-bedroom apartment costs $2,688, and the median three-bedroom apartment costs $3,800 per month.
“Social distancing guidelines, travel restrictions and eviction moratoriums resulting from the coronavirus pandemic continue to impact Santa Barbara’s rental housing market,” the report’s authors wrote.
— Noozhawk staff writer Brooke Holland can be reached at bholland@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
